Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/223654 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 13212
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In many OECD countries, low productivity growth has coincided with rising inequality. Widening wage and productivity gaps between firms may have contributed to both developments. This paper uses a new harmonised cross-country linked employer-employee dataset for 14 OECD countries to analyse the role of firms in wage inequality. The main finding is that, on average across countries, changes in the dispersion of average wages between firms explain about half of the changes in overall wage inequality. Two thirds of these changes in between-firm wage inequality are accounted for by changes in productivity-related premia that firms pay their workers above common market wages. The remaining third can be attributed to changes in workforce composition, including the sorting of high-skilled workers into high-paying firms. Over all, these results suggest that firms play an important role in explaining wage inequality as wages are driven to a significant extent by firm performance rather than being exclusively determined by workers' earnings characteristics.
Subjects: 
wage inequality
firm wage premium
productivity
JEL: 
D2
J31
J38
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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